Thomas Haney student places third at Canada-Wide Science Fair

Ben Chisholm has learned that when something works, don’t mess with the formula.

Thomas Haney secondary student Ben Chisholm is convinced of this now that he once again returned home from an all-expenses-paid trip to the Canada-Wide Science Fair.

Held in New Brunswick earlier this month, the nation-wide Youth Science Canada fair brought together almost 500 top youth scientists from across the country, including Chisholm.

His project, which showed how to change electrical production of a microbial fuel cell by adding different additives to mud, was an evolution from his 2014-winning project that captured an electrical current created by combining hydrogen and oxygen.

Both last year’s project, Fuel Cycle of the Future: Part 2, and this year’s contender, One Man’s Waste is Another Man’s Power, won him accolades at the Fraser Valley Regional Science Fair, a competition that brings together 12 different schools from around B.C.

Both years Chisholm competed in the national fair, but this year he was also presented with a bronze medal as well as a university scholarship to Western University in Ontario.

“I didn’t think I was going to win,” he said.

Chisholm, 14, says he plans to go into science once he graduates from high school, but at this stage he is uncertain what his major might be.

“Computer science, engineering, something in the energy field perhaps.”

Although science and gym have been his favourite subjects for the two years he has been living in Maple Ridge, Chisholm says he became interested in science four years ago when he was attending school in England.

He plans to continue with science competitions and says he may even enter the Google Science Fair one year if he feels he has a winning project possibility.